Medical Research May Hold
The Key to Kobe's Recovery

By

David Kruger and

Ichiko Fuyuno Dow Jones Newswires

Updated June 24, 2002 12:01 a.m. ET

Tatsuo Yada stands at the window of an elegant reception room on the 15th floor of Kobe City Hall and surveys his city's future. In the hazy distance several hundred meters offshore in Osaka Bay sits Port Island, home of an ambitious plan to turn this western Japanese city into a center for advanced research in life sciences and regenerative medicine.

As its name suggests, the man-made island, which was completed in 1980, was designed...